Monthly Archives: August 2005

Yesterday was the first Vancouver Zombiewalk. I’m a huge fan of zombie movies. I usually zombify myself for Halloween, and I even wrote a short (unfilmed) zombie movie back when I was in film school. So naturally, when I heard about the Zombiewalk, I was pretty excited, but maybe a little apprehensive. The thing didn’t really seem to have much central organization, and it seemed to be spreading only through a few local blogs and word of mouth. How many people would hear about it and be enough into zombies to put together costumes and spend a Saturday afternoon in August wandering around Vancouver?

A lot, it turns out.

I was expecting maybe few dozen people, tops. But we were an army. A mighty army of the living dead, lusting after the brains of the living.

We shuffled around the Vancouver Art Gallery, past the war protesters, into the the Pacific Center mall to the shock of the shoppers, stumbling down the escalator and into the bowels of the earth to catch the train. The skytrain passengers could only watch helplessly as their train pulled up into a sea of zombies which invaded the cars, only to be disgorged at the Main Street station. We staggered up Main Street, surrounding buses and police cars, past the trendy restaurants and hipster hangouts and into the residential streets and parks. People came out to their front lawns and balconies to gawk at us, until finally we lurched into Mountainview Cemetery to rejoin our resting brethren.

It was a fantastic experience — unexpected and surreal and pointless and bizarre. The people we passed were (mostly) completely surprised and amused to see this invasion of the dead. Even the police escort we eventually picked up was entertained, joking and posing with the zombies. Hopefully, we made helped make everyone’s day just a little more surreal.